MouseTrap Cars
Lenika Aguilar & Donovan Drews.
Victory
10/28/14
Accuracy, distance, and speed were the project’s 3 objectives. Accuracy, the quality or state of being correct or precise. Accuracy is also a difficult element to work with. Trying to get a mousetrap car to move straight isn’t a piece of cake! Neither is trying to increase the distance that our mousetrap car went. Oh boy, and partnering up those two elements with speed sure was a challenge. Having large wheels made “Victory” go far but not so fast. My partner and I had to sacrifice one element for the other or just make them all equal.
Material List
First Draft:
-Wheels
-Base
Other Essentials:
-Circular Piece of Woodx2
-Small Circular Piece of Plastic
-Rectangular Pieces of Birch Woodx2
-Metal Rodx2
-Long Rectangular Piece of Birch Wood x4
-String
Second Draft:
Wheels
Base
Other Essentials:
-Circular Piece of Woodx3
-Rectangular Pieces of Birch Woodx2
-Metal Rodx2
-Long Rectangular Piece of Birch Wood x4
-String
-Silver, Purple, Red & Blue Paint
-Rubber Band x3
The thinking process of getting the car’s accuracy to 100% took time. Trying all sorts of things to get the accuracy to its best point is what had to happen. Adjusting the size of the car’s wheels, taking weight off the car, and increasing/decreasing the length of the car’s axle, were all things my partner and I tried to see if our car’s accuracy would get better. In the end we decided on larger wheels that come close to each other. The large diameter of the wheels made our mousetrap car go further. Now we were successful in making our car go far and straight, but our car wasn’t moving so fast. Sacrificing our car’s distance and accuracy wasn’t worth the speed. Our solution to this problem was to make the rod and string long and also tight. The longer contact the string would have to the car’s axle would make the axle spin faster and longer.
Overall, for building a mousetrap powered for the first time I dont think my partner or I did bad. We both understood what was happening to the car when it moved and why it was happening. Our first draft had some flaws and we saw them when we let our car go on the race track for the first time. We quickly found replacements for those failing pieces of equipment. On our first draft our front wheel was a flimsy piece of plastic, so my partner and I realized a wooden wheel would work better. Now our final car had a nice set of wheels but it had terrible traction. This wasn’t a difficult issue to fix because all we did was add rubber bands to the wheels to help the car’s grip.
Our car’s appearance could’ve been improved. “Victory” wasn’t very appealing and changing it’s looks could’ve made people want to know more about how it worked. Well, I for sure know the basics and the physics behind the car’s motions. Next time it’s the looks I got to work on to catch other’s attention.
Victory
10/28/14
Accuracy, distance, and speed were the project’s 3 objectives. Accuracy, the quality or state of being correct or precise. Accuracy is also a difficult element to work with. Trying to get a mousetrap car to move straight isn’t a piece of cake! Neither is trying to increase the distance that our mousetrap car went. Oh boy, and partnering up those two elements with speed sure was a challenge. Having large wheels made “Victory” go far but not so fast. My partner and I had to sacrifice one element for the other or just make them all equal.
Material List
First Draft:
-Wheels
-Base
Other Essentials:
-Circular Piece of Woodx2
-Small Circular Piece of Plastic
-Rectangular Pieces of Birch Woodx2
-Metal Rodx2
-Long Rectangular Piece of Birch Wood x4
-String
Second Draft:
Wheels
Base
Other Essentials:
-Circular Piece of Woodx3
-Rectangular Pieces of Birch Woodx2
-Metal Rodx2
-Long Rectangular Piece of Birch Wood x4
-String
-Silver, Purple, Red & Blue Paint
-Rubber Band x3
The thinking process of getting the car’s accuracy to 100% took time. Trying all sorts of things to get the accuracy to its best point is what had to happen. Adjusting the size of the car’s wheels, taking weight off the car, and increasing/decreasing the length of the car’s axle, were all things my partner and I tried to see if our car’s accuracy would get better. In the end we decided on larger wheels that come close to each other. The large diameter of the wheels made our mousetrap car go further. Now we were successful in making our car go far and straight, but our car wasn’t moving so fast. Sacrificing our car’s distance and accuracy wasn’t worth the speed. Our solution to this problem was to make the rod and string long and also tight. The longer contact the string would have to the car’s axle would make the axle spin faster and longer.
Overall, for building a mousetrap powered for the first time I dont think my partner or I did bad. We both understood what was happening to the car when it moved and why it was happening. Our first draft had some flaws and we saw them when we let our car go on the race track for the first time. We quickly found replacements for those failing pieces of equipment. On our first draft our front wheel was a flimsy piece of plastic, so my partner and I realized a wooden wheel would work better. Now our final car had a nice set of wheels but it had terrible traction. This wasn’t a difficult issue to fix because all we did was add rubber bands to the wheels to help the car’s grip.
Our car’s appearance could’ve been improved. “Victory” wasn’t very appealing and changing it’s looks could’ve made people want to know more about how it worked. Well, I for sure know the basics and the physics behind the car’s motions. Next time it’s the looks I got to work on to catch other’s attention.
Photo used under Creative Commons from Olga Kuba